Loco Motive

Get ready for Hick-Hop Muzik, rap meets country, with a very different short of posse. It's country of a different color from Cowboy Troy, who burst onto the scene with the rap in "Rollin'" from Big & Rich's multiplatinum Horse Of A Different Color and was a sensation performing on last year's Tim McGraw tour and "New Year's Rockin' Eve." Now MuzikMafia godfathers Big & Rich launch the major label debut of Cowboy Troy, the world's only black country rapper.

When Tim McGraw and Big & Rich toured together in 2004, their special guest rapper all but stole the show. With his full-length CD debut, Cowboy Troy returns to build a bridge between country and hip-hop through a fusion that he dubs "hick-hop." Produced by Big & Rich, who collaborated on much of the material with Texan Troy Coleman, the raps bring down-home humor to uptown rhyming, as fiddle, banjo, and steel guitar punctuate the beat. While "I Play Chicken with the Train" and "My Last Yeehaw," both with Big & Rich, might generate some novelty airplay, Troy shows more reflective depth on a spoken-word ballad, "If You Don't Love Me," and a spiritual dimension on "Somebody's Smilin' on Me," with chorus harmonies by McGraw and Big Kenny. "El Tejano" includes a Spanish-language interlude, while "Beast on the Mic" has a Japanese hook. With the closing "Wrap Around the World," Troy celebrates hip-hop as the universal language, with the world of country music no longer an exception. --Don McLeese